They had been married now for two weeks, the Señor Don Gil and the Señora, and for the first time in her young life the Señora was happy. Sad to have reached the age of seventeen and not to have passed one happy day, hardly a happy hour! Now the girl was like a bird let loose, but the Señor, for a bridegroom, seemed somewhat distrait and dejected. As he sipped his weak decoction he often raised his eyes to the wooded heights beyond which Troja lay.
"What is the matter, Gil? Is not the tea good?"
"As good as the hay from the old potrera, dear Heart. And cold? One would imagine that we possessed our own ice-machine."
The Señora looked at Don Gil questioningly. His face was serious. She smiled. These were virtues, then! The Señora did not know much about the English decoction.
"Be careful, Raquel. That aged lizard will fall into the teapot else; he might get a chill. Chills are fatal to lizards." Don Gil was smiling now.
Raquel closed the lid with a loud bang. The lizard scampered up the allemanda vine, where it hid behind one of the yellow velvet flowers.
"But you seem so absent in mind, Gil. What is it all about? You look so often up the broad camino. Do you expect any--any one--Gil?"
Don Gil dropped over his eyes those long and purling lashes which, since his adolescence, had been the pride and despair of every belle within the radius of twenty miles.
"You do expect some one, Gil; no welcome guest. That I can see. Oh! Gil. It is my un--it is Escobeda whom you expect."
"I think it is quite likely that he will come," he said. "I may as well tell you, Raquel; the steamer arrived this morning. He must have waited there over a steamer." Had Silencio voiced his conviction, he would have added, "Escobeda's vengeance may be slow, but it is sure as well."
The Señora's face was colourless, her frightened eyes were raised anxiously to his. Her lips hardly formed the word that told him of her fear.
"Any day now. But do not look so worried, dear Heart. I think that we need not fear Escobeda."
"But he will kill us, Gil. He will burn the casa."
"No. He might try to crush some poor and defenceless peon, but hardly the owner of Palmacristi. Still, all things are possible, all cruelties and barbarities, with a man like Escobeda. His followers are a lawless set of rascals."